Geek Dinner

I went to a geek dinner last night even though I'm not sure I count. There was a broad spectrum of people from Google java developers to Craig, a .net guy, who is working in the mining industry.

(Craig Murhpy's Flickr page)

Moo.com (hey - I didn't know they were based in London) gave a talk on their history which is a nice little story. They're now doing ~30,000,000 cards printed per year which, at £10/100, is a turnover of £3m on cards alone before other products are taken into consideration. They also state their gross margin is 70% so I guess they are approaching (if not already at) profitability.

The one thing that struck me about them as bunch was the team dynamic where everyone could answer a question and there seemed to be no strict hierarchy which is the way it should be.

I also bumped into Alex from SmallBizPod.

Review of Thaismile Restaurant where the event was held.

Twitter and and micro blogging eats itself

How many Twitter messages are:

Twittering on @Twitter

?

I do like these services even if I don't have enough time to constantly play ball. I'll pick it up for a while and then drop it again.

Anyway, as my wife is expecting our next girl in around a month I loved this which then made me thing of this.

Google kicks in

Just beginning to see some huge growth in Users of BView off the back of better Google listings producing long tail search results.

We produced a XML site map for launch which was frowned upon by a couple of of SEOs I know. The argument here is that SEO activities are harder to monitor because there is no direct correlation between a page being in the index and effort applied to get it there via internal links while the traffic boost is non-existent.

I think this is subjective as we have been able to monitor how Google is crawling pretty accurately. Now that we have some examples of content hubs and crawl pathways we will try to be a bot more selective in what is returned in results because some of our pages provide a better User experience than others and we want to provide great search results every time via Google as it can only help us.

Product priority

The basics of product prioritisation:

1. Everything should have a number one priority
(it's clearly part of our core proposition)

2. Everything should be done in the next release
(it's because you are not planning and coding properly)

3. The planned release can always be disrupted for the latest big idea
(we just can't wait another 20 days to properly plan, build, test and deliver it)

4. Everyone else's ideas are ridiculous
(i.e. let's not build them)

Basics of post-release analysis:

1. That was my idea first
(it's not my problem you can't remember me suggesting it)

2. What idiot thought of this?
(I hope they've forgotten it was me)

Website that should use RSS but never will

I go to the national rail website and perform searches for my next train home all the time. It is an annoying interface and I don't like it. The URL is not paramaterised so I can't bookmark it. I want a RSS feed that I can instantly see my next train.

What is interesting and how much of it to display

When we built BView we thought "hey let's make the site social and tell people what is else is going on" so we built little widgets of content that pull out local people, reviews etc. Of course we were not the first (or the last) however I've come round to thinking that when including content it must either be directly relevant or it should be just a flow of activity.

An example of this is local people. It's nice to show local people but it is nicer is to show people that do things the same as me (based on some kind of relevance rating). Local reviews is good but I want more than that...I want latest reviews in the area, I want who wrote them, I want edits, comments, essentially anything that might spark my interest.

I love what Brightkite has done in this area and I am working on making something better.

Reputation management: the right way and the wrong way

When we launched BView we had assumed that there would be a mass of abusive reviews and/or reviews that the business did not agree with.

It transpires that:

i) people are genuine and should be trusted (which is an area we are building the app out in)
ii) reviews tend to be well written balanced and fair.

That does not mean we haven't had people use the review system in a manner we don't agree with.

Vindictive reviews have featured (you rated my friends business badly therefore I am going to review you badly) while well written reviews of poor experiences get requests for removal. These have been frustrating as we offer the means to address all issues and take the conversation into the open.

My advice to people creating platforms of this ilk: trust the people.

Google update rates

WOW! Add a new story on Digg and it is returned in Google results less than 10mins after addition. I've also noticed this happen on Yahoo Answers.

Marc Andreessen on Facebook board

Saw on webware that Marc Andreessen has been asked (and has accepted) a place on Facebook's board.

I was pissed that I missed thechance to meet him when he was in our officesa few years ago as his blog is great and ning has been ultra bold in taking it's time and burning though a lot of cash to get tothe point it is an it's current value.

Fun to see what Ning (Open Social clan member) does with Facebook (already pretty well integrated actually) in the future?

Good move by Facebook. Marc, there always a place on our board for you.